jm JAQUELINE MUTERE Founder and Director, Grace Agenda, Kenya Impact of International Criminal Court processes on survivors of gender-based violence in Kenya Mutere’s presentation focused on the impact of the ICC on the survivors of the post-election violence in Kenya. She argued that, initially, many survivors felt that the ICC was their only hope for justice and that there was much support for the ICC, largely on account of a lack of trust in domestic courts. The phrase ‘Don’t be vague, go to The Hague’ became a common slogan among Kenyan civil society organisations. Mutere then outlined the trajectory of the ICC cases in Kenya. She noted that, after the cases began to collapse, rape survivors were not acknowledged. In light of the immense hope that the ICC had offered initially, this was deeply disappointing to survivors who were left without access to justice and whose experiences of sexual violence and its impact have been neither acknowledged nor addressed. The best options currently available to the victims in Kenya are the Alternative Justice System and the Justice Restoration Fund. Mutere critiqued the ICC for its failure to get back to survivors and report on why the cases fell through, noting that the ICC ought to pursue the well-being of survivors of sexual and gender-based crimes with the same fervour with which it pursues perpetrators of violence. In light of the absence of accountability for sexual violence, Mutere established Grace Agenda, an organisation that brought women and girls in the same position as her (survivors of rape and women who have borne children as a result) together to help one another and assist with one another’s children. In her own words, ‘once you start to heal the women and mothers, the healing [is] passed on to the children too’. Mutere stressed the importance of memory and the ways in which it means different things to different people. In this regard, she highlighted the importance of survivors’ going through the process of memory themselves. Ultimately, for Mutere, the question is about who can remember, how they can remember, and when they can remember, and that this process cannot be dictated by others. Mutere noted that, if she had not initiated her own agency to get answers from people, she would not have any of the information she shared in her presentation. Ultimately, for Mutere, it is not just about taking the perpetrators to court, but also about support, especially since justice is subjective and means different things to different people. PANEL 5: The impacts of accountability processes for sexual and gender-based violence /23